The St. Landry Parish council voted to honor a long-time local business leader with a memorial sign along a portion of Sunflower Road near Eunice.

At the public works committee meeting earlier this month, Councilman Coby Clavier asked Parish President Bill Fontenot whether Sunflower Road could be changed to George Soileau Road in honor of the businessman, who was well respected in the area.

However, parish 911 Communications Director Jude Moreau said Wednesday it is difficult to change the names of existing roads.

"Anytime you change a road name, everyone on that road becomes lost for a period of time," Moreau said. "When an ambulance company gets a call, they may not know where that road is because the name just changed. There's a transition period. This could turn out very badly."

Moreau added that changing street names requires at least 75 percent of the residents living on the roads to agree with the change. He said there are fees and each resident would have to change their driver's licenses, mortgage payments and other documents if the name was changed.

Moreau suggested that a memorial road sign would be the best way to honor Soileau because there is less hassle involved for the residents on the road.

In another matter, the St. Landry Parish government is requesting state funding for two rural water systems to expand water lines to subdivision customers.

The parish is seeking $50,000 to connect about 10 residences to the Bayou Des Cannes Water System off U.S. 190 west of Eunice and another $50,000 for about 50 residential expansions to the Water District No. 3 North Wilderness Subdivision between Port Barre and Krotz Springs.

Fontenot said the customers in those areas are using private water wells for their water needs.

Fontenot said the projects may not cost $50,000 each, which is the maximum amount that can be distributed, but he said applying for that amount should help ensure that each area gets the appropriate funding.

In an unrelated matter, Wilkens Jones, a parish resident, addressed the council in support of a parishwide library system.

Jones said a parishwide library would help public school students who he said are at a disadvantage for scholarship funding because of inferior library facilities.

Council member Mildred Thierry said she supports the creation of the library system, but she is not in favor of a tax to fund the system.

At the committee meetings earlier this month, Ginger LeCompte with the St. Landry Parish Library Coalition addressed the council about a parishwide library system in St. Landry Parish.

At that meeting, LeCompte explained that St. Landry is the only parish in the state without a parishwide system.

She explained that a library system would allow the libraries to be interconnected, which would give them more buying power for books and information technology. It would also connect the local libraries to the state library system as well as the Library of Congress.

LeCompte said currently, each municipality with a library has to figure out how the library will be funded. She said some books in the Opelousas and Eunice libraries have not been checked out in more than 25 years.